Bratton, artist at odds over sculpture at LAPD HQ

LOS ANGELES 
William Bratton and Peter Shelton are both leaving their marks on the new police department headquarters.

Bratton's brand of policing has been stamped on the department he has led for seven years. He leaves Oct. 31 to join a global security firm based in Virginia.

The legacy of Shelton, a public works artist, will be more visible, more secure and possibly more lasting.

His $500,000 ensemble sculpture, at times called "sixbeaststwomonkeys" and "animaline," is nearly finished – and Bratton, the Los Angeles police chief, has become his biggest critic.

The artwork has become known as "some kind of cow splat" within the department, said Bratton. The sculpture was consciously designed to have no connection to policing, he added.

"I take that as a great affront," he said. "An unwanted thing just suddenly landed here. I just don't get that, and we are stuck with it. But if you don't like it, you don't have to look at it. It's on the back side of our building. There are three other sides."

Shelton's artwork consists of eight pedestals. Six spherical objects are in the middle, flanked by two tall pieces. Each cast bronze form weighs between 500 and 800 pounds. The end structures have veins of steel.

Bratton said he was told it was a herd of animals without heads and with their legs missing.

"They are abstract forms," Shelton explained. "They have animal-like qualities in some cases. The possibilities for interpretation are broad, and that's the point. If I wanted to render an elephant perfectly, I am perfectly capable of that."

He said the work doesn't have a proper name. It was called "sixbeaststwomonkeys" when he looked at the figures as a "mammoth, a bison, beasts of burden lumbering along. The monkey forms were tall-legged things, giraffes without heads, just some kind of legged animal on top of stilts."

Shelton said the police chief was shown drawings and proposals 18 months ago and that one of his top lieutenants was involved. Bratton said the police representative did not make the proposal clear and "that's a shame on us for not knowing better."

The police chief said he thought they had killed the idea, thrown it out with renderings for a police memorial being included in the building. He said he helped raise $750,000 for memorial art that "has great relevance and connectivity and resonates very well with the police department."

But the artist said he wanted something "playful, provocative and thoughtful."

"You don't need to worry about whether it means something," he said. "Just consider the forms and go where your imagination takes you. People walk by with grins on their faces, and that is the payoff for me."

Shelton, a 58-year-old Ohio native, has spent the last 10 years working on public art projects. He plans to do some studio work next and is "looking forward to a little peace and quiet."

The artist, who has works on display at the Getty Center, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, said the police project was far from the biggest job he has ever undertaken. He said the project's intention was not to provide security for the $437 million building.

"They are not traffic ballers. They were not designed to protect the building against any menace, unless the chief wants to think of it as aesthetic security," said Shelton, a Pomona College graduate who received his master of fine arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles.

It's unlikely Shelton will make a convert of Bratton anytime soon.

The chief said he has worked hard to foster transparency and openness within his department.

"Now we have one of the most gorgeous buildings in the city. Could we not have picked an artist that could have conveyed transparency and openness?" Bratton asked.

"I don't like that outside this police building. It has become the butt of many jokes because of the way it's been received," he said.